The Binary Stars of Destiny

by Reki Kawahara

  The desire to own a rare item? No.

  The instinct to enhance his fighting power? No.

  The light, which should have been nothing more than a single Enhanced Armament, even if it was an Arc, didn’t seem like just a simple item to Haruyuki. As proof, the Fluctuating Light he saw as save data in the “dream” he’d shared with Chiyuri and Takumu that morning, inside the Brain Burst central server—which was, in a certain sense, a region more impenetrable than the Castle—had glittered and shone more brightly than any of the other stars in the center of the galaxy. Almost as if it were the absolute core of the Accelerated World itself.

  “The final Arc, Youkou.” Lead’s voice came abruptly from his immediate left, and Haruyuki pulled himself back from his own thoughts with a gasp. “If you could obtain that item and activate the portal behind it, it would be possible to exit the Castle normally. However, that is simply too difficult. Because that fence—it was a sacred rope the other day, but the moment you go beyond it, extremely powerful Enemies begin to appear in the space on the other side.”

  “Begin to appear? Does that mean it’s not just one?” Utai asked from Haruyuki’s right, and Lead nodded slightly.

  “Yes. Two appear at first. And then they continue to appear in pairs as the intruders move forward or stand in place. I’ve confirmed there are at least six, but that probably isn’t all of them. Based on a guess that there will be at least two more, I call them the Eight Divinities.”

  “E-Eight Divinities,” Haruyuki murmured tensely. They hadn’t even been able to do anything against just one of the super-high-level Enemies guarding the gates outside the Castle, the Four Gods. “What if that portal actually leads to the next boss room, and sixteen Divinities popped up there?”

  Lead seemed to give serious consideration to this casual thought passing Haruyuki’s lips, so Haruyuki hurriedly shook both his head and his hands from side to side.

  “N-no, sorry. Forget that. Uh, umm, anyway, so it seems like you totes can’t get to the portal without defeating the Eight Divinities. You can’t just avoid their attacks, huh?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right, Crow. I think it’s most likely that it is totes not possible to obtain Youkou unless you defeat all the Enemies.”

  “Forget that ‘totes’ bit, too,” Haruyuki added quickly, afraid he had accidentally taught the completely straightforward Lead and the dictionary in his head a weird word. “Uh, um, it definitely doesn’t look like leaving through that portal is realistic. So then, the second way? We were kinda thinking it might end up being this. We have to go back to the south gate and leave through that…right?”

  Lead turned back to Haruyuki and smiled as he nodded. “That is correct. Although if you insist on it, Crow, I have no issue with using the north or the west gate.”

  “N-no, the south gate’s good! Our friends are waiting there and all,” Haruyuki replied before cocking his head. “The east’s no good?”

  “I would hesitate slightly to recommend the east gate. The particular attack of the guardian beast Seiryu is a bit troublesome.”

  “Huh? What does it do?”

  “It is called Level Drain.”

  “So we’ll forget about the east,” he answered immediately. “N-no, forget about the north and west, too. Please, let’s go to the south gate.”

  “Totes understood, Crow.” Lead nodded with a serious look on his face, and unusually, Utai, standing off to the right, let a small giggle slip out.

  “Both of you are in such perfect sync, I can’t get a word in.”

  “Huh? A-are we?”

  “You perform a splendid shite-kata and waki-kata,” Utai commented, using words Haruyuki didn’t know, before growing serious once more and bowing toward Lead again. “Lead, do forgive me for asking, but I would deeply appreciate your help in this endeavor.”

  “I will expend every effort. Now then, let us first go upstairs.” Lead moved away from the sword barricade and began walking toward the stairs at the back of the small room, leading upward. Utai followed.

  Haruyuki took a few steps after the two Burst Linkers before looking back one last time at the Shrine of the Eight Divinities. He stared at the golden light flickering on the other side of the ultramarine darkness and murmured in his heart, I will come here again someday. I’ll travel the proper path to come see you again once I have power befitting you…so please wait for me.

  It sounded more like he was talking to a person rather than any Enhanced Armament, but Haruyuki clearly saw the seventh Arc flash brightly, as if it had its own will and was responding to him. Or he felt like he did, anyway.

  The stairs that had been thick planks two days earlier had transformed into a spiral staircase that was a combination of polished stone and steel.

  Right around the time he had lost track of how many times they had gone around, they finally arrived aboveground. They emerged from the staircase into the great hall, which was now both threatening and imposing, exactly what he would expect from a Demon City stage. Decorating the walls were countless protruding spears. Tapered chandelier on the ceiling, like a kind of drop trap. The only things that remained unchanged were the two objects lined up in the center of the great hall, the black granite pedestals where the fifth and sixth stars of the Seven Arcs were once enshrined.

  “Right. So then, actually,” he started to say casually, and then clamped his mouth shut. Lead, ahead of him, looked back, perplexed, and Haruyuki apologized with a quick “Sorry, it’s nothing.”

  What he had been about to say was, Actually, the one who has the other Arc from those pedestals is me.

  The fifth of the Seven Arcs glittered beautifully on the waist of the young samurai avatar before him. And the sixth Arc, the Destiny, was sleeping lightly, deep inside Haruyuki himself—inside Silver Crow. However, it was no longer the mirrorlike silver it had once been. Now a dark chrome, Destiny had transformed into Disaster, the Armor of Catastrophe, a cursed power and the greatest in the Accelerated World.

  Haruyuki couldn’t remember all of that strange dream, but way, way back, at the dawn of the Accelerated World, a lone Burst Linker had succeeded in infiltrating the Castle and obtaining the Destiny. Rather than use it himself, he had given it to his partner. To the girl with golden-yellow armor who appeared in Haruyuki’s dream. However, after that, something—a very sad and scary something—had happened. But no matter how hard he tried, Haruyuki couldn’t remember the details. He earnestly dug through his hazy memories, but all that came back to him were several fragmented images.

  An Enemy with an enormous, terrifying form.

  A group of Burst Linkers lined up around the edge of a large hole, looking down.

  And several people in one corner whispering to one another things he didn’t really understand. “Main Visualizer,” “override,” “mental scar shell.” The words hazily wafted through his ears, but when he tried to catch them, they disappeared without warning, like soap bubbles. If he tried to chase after them, it would almost certainly happen once more: the overflow, calling up extremely negative feelings alongside intense pain. Right now, he had to at least avoid collapsing and being unable to move.

  At any rate, because of some incident that included these images, the Destiny had changed shape—or perhaps even its essential nature—to become the Disaster. Thus, the Enhanced Armament Haruyuki currently possessed could no longer be called one of the Seven Arcs. When he thought about explaining this history to Lead, who knew nothing of it, no matter how much time he had, it wouldn’t be enough, and he didn’t have enough information to begin with to even explain things properly.

  Sorry, Lead. Haruyuki apologized in his heart to the blue back of the young samurai, whom he felt strangely close to. Someday, I’ll definitely tell you everything. Not just about the armor, but why I became a Burst Linker, what I fight for, what I’m aiming for, everything; I won’t leave anything out. And when that time comes, you, too…

  Here, he forced his thoughts to a halt, quickened his
pace, and came up alongside the pair walking before him. They passed between the two pedestals, so close their shoulders were almost touching, and headed toward the south of the Great Hall.

  The exit and its imposing ornamentation came into view, and Haruyuki spoke up once more in a quiet voice. “Huh? The terrain’s different?”

  When they had entered the great hall two days earlier, he was sure they had gone down a hallway running east–west. But now, the path he could see beyond the doorway was stretching out to the south—and he could see stairs leading up beyond that.

  Responding to Haruyuki’s confusion was not Lead but Utai. “The Change happened, and the stage transformed from Heian to Demon City, so the structure of the maze changed with it, not just the design.”

  “Hngh! So then my ‘memories’ are no good anymore.”

  The reason Haruyuki and Utai had been able to make it to the great hall without getting caught by patrolling Enemies two days earlier was because he hazily remembered the path taken by an unknown avatar in a mysterious “dream.” But if the terrain had been transformed along with the Change, then naturally, he couldn’t make use of those memories now.

  Fortunately, however, Lead nodded as if to reassure them. “It’s all right,” he said smoothly. “I know the way.”

  “Huh? So does that maybe mean that you’ve memorized the map of this Castle for the hundred or more different stages?” he asked, stunned.

  The young samurai nodded, somewhat bashfully. “That said, I actually only remember the way from this great hall to the exit of the inner sanctuary.”

  “Th-that’s plenty. Great! For a second there, I thought we’d have to play the dungeon right from scratch to get out. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t hate that, but, you know…I actually like that sort of thing.”

  Lead flashed a quiet smile at Haruyuki’s strange relief, but his face took on its serious look again soon enough. “But speaking from my own experience, the level of difficulty of Demon City is a fair bit higher than Heian. The strength of individual sentinel Enemies is not as great, but because there are more of them, it’s difficult to move without being seen.”

  In his mind, Haruyuki cocked his head curiously at Lead’s unbalanced knowledge; he didn’t know the name Nega Nebulus, but he knew the stage names. Still, he set aside his questions for the time being and murmured, “I get it. Mobs are more likely to aggro, so sneaking’s harder.”

  This time, it was not only Lead who gave him a puzzled look but also Utai. It seemed neither was familiar with the general terminology of net games. The thought struck him that it would be fun to make them talk with Pard, but he quickly tucked it away and continued without the jargon.

  “Um, basically, moving takes more focus than in the Heian stage. But still, let’s make it happen somehow. I’m pretty good at sneaking around.”

  “That’s very reassuring.” Haruyuki was half joking, but Lead took in his utterance with a serious face. “But there is just one place where we will not be able to slip by in the Enemy’s blind spot, no matter what we do. Thus, we will be forced to fight once. I’d appreciate it if you could prepare yourselves mentally for that.”

  “W-we will? Okay, got it. It’s fine. W-w-we’ll fight. If they’re weaker than the Heian stage, I feel like we’ll be able to manage it. I’m sure it’ll be okay, probably.” The mere thought of fighting one of those Enemies was enough to make a fountain of sweat gush up inside, but Haruyuki tried to cover it with a display of bravado. He clapped his hand to his chest and jumped forward about three meters. Whirling around, he asked Lead, “So then, maybe you could tell us, just so we know, about when the fight’ll happen?”

  Lead’s reaction was unusually slow; after two seconds or so, he apologized for some reason. “I’m sorry, Crow. My explanation was insufficient.”

  “Huh? H-how was it not enough?”

  “The unavoidable fight is when we leave this great hall. A single sentinel Enemy is patrolling there.”

  “…Huh.” At the same time as Haruyuki let a stunned noise slip out, he heard a heavy metallic sound behind him. Nervously turning around, he saw through the large exit an even larger silhouette peeking into the great hall.

  In the Heian stage two days earlier, the Enemies guarding the inner sanctuary of the Castle had all taken the form of Japanese-style warriors, but in the current Demon City stage, they resembled something like knights. The large frame closing in on them was three meters tall and covered in thick metal armor. In its left hand, a kite shield the size of a door. In its right, a rough greatsword that looked as though it had been hewn from a piece of steel.

  The area beneath the open helmet and the long horns growing out of it was swallowed up by darkness, making it invisible to Haruyuki, but from within that darkness, two sharply glittering purple eyes stared down at him. That gaze indicated he had entered the reaction range of the knight Enemy.

  “…Huh,” he inadvertently murmured again, hoarsely, and slowly moved to step back. But before he could, the knight stepped into the great hall with a weighty, thunderous sound.

  “Voraaaaaa!”

  If forced to transcribe the battle cry that slammed into his avatar with a physical force, Haruyuki would string the letters together something like that. He staggered backward, while an impossibly massive sword was brandished high above his head.

  “Hey. Wait,” he said, stunned, but the Enemy was obviously not going to listen to him, a tiny avatar that didn’t even reach up to its waist. The purple eyes blazed, and the knight moved to slice him neatly in two.

  The sharp noise of the sword cutting through the air kick-started Haruyuki’s halted thoughts.

  An arc of blue light came flying from behind him and drove into the sword of the Enemy knight, pushing it back the slightest bit. Not letting this opening slip away, Haruyuki dashed backward with everything he had.

  Moving forward past him was the young samurai with the azure armor, Trilead. The previous attack had definitely been his, but the straight sword on his left hip was still in its scabbard, and both hands were wrapped in blue light.

  Haruyuki opened his eyes wide as Lead brought his weaponless right hand straight up into the air.

  “Ha!!”

  A battle cry like a scream. His sword hand flashed up and down, and a sword of light in the shape of a crescent moon—the same as the one Haruyuki had seen before—emerged and raced through the air. The metallic clash again. The blue arc struck the knight’s neck and carved out a definite mark on the thick armor.

  “Voruuuuu,” the knight groaned, moving its gaze from Haruyuki to Lead, shifting its target. In other words, the knight’s AI was, as Haruyuki suspected the last time, based on a simple hate principle, unlike the AI of the Four Gods.

  “Vora!!” the knight roared, and whipped the massive sword sideways through the air.

  This single slice would no doubt have mown down even the enormous trees of the Primeval Forest stage, but Lead dodged it with a sliding step. For the third time, an arc of light shot out from his sword hand to dig into the surface of the shield in the knight’s left hand.

  Haruyuki pushed Ardor Maiden farther back behind him in an unconscious gesture as he continued to watch the duel with wide eyes.

  It was the first time he had seen the mysterious Burst Linker Trilead Tetroxide fighting. Haruyuki had expected it to a certain extent from the way the young samurai carried himself, but he was indeed extremely skilled. The way he stepped smoothly, like water flowing; the speed with which he moved from evasion to counterattack; and above all else, the blades of blue light launched from both hands in rapid succession were no mere special attack. Given that he wasn’t calling out the name of the attack and the fact that it had the power to dig into the incredibly hard armor of the knight Enemy, it was clearly a power generated outside the system by his imagination—an Incarnate attack.

  At the same time as his Burst Linker’s instincts had him collect all this information instantaneously, Haruyuki felt a single question
rise up in him.

  Why didn’t Trilead take out his sword? The weapon equipped at his left hip was the Arc Infinity, which held an attack power that it was likely no exaggeration to say was the greatest in the Accelerated World. If he could generate that kind of power with no weapon, it wasn’t inconceivable that he could do several times, maybe a hundred times more damage if he used the Arc.

  “My apologies, Crow! There is a reason why I can’t use the sword right now!” Lead shouted out, almost as if he had read Haruyuki’s mind, as he jumped aside to dodge the knight’s sword. “This Enemy must be defeated without the Arc!”

  “G-got it!” Haruyuki shouted back immediately, and hurriedly added, “It’s okay to use I-Incarnate?!”

  He asked because the conversation with Kuroyukihime and the others from two days earlier still lingered in his ears. The higher the level of Enemy, the more ineffective Incarnate attacks became, and at the same time, Enemies were more likely to be drawn to the Incarnate waves. Just the one knight before him was so terrifying he was practically passing out; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay in place and not run like the wind if another one or two came along.

  Fortunately, however, Lead nodded quickly. “In this room, it’s all right as long as we don’t use it for more than ten minutes in succession!”

  “Got it!” Haruyuki shouted again, and then belatedly readied his own hands in front of him. His brain, stunned at the sudden appearance of the Enemy, was finally switching into battle mode.

  Happily, the knight Enemy wasn’t using long-distance attacks. Of course, their opponent was a Castle guard Enemy, likely on par with Legend-class Enemies, so if he took a real hit from that sword, Haruyuki would be killed instantly. If it kept picking out new targets, they clearly couldn’t focus their might, but he was sure they had a chance of winning if they worked together with Lead and attacked from a distance.

  He took a deep breath and brought the image of light speed into both hands, taking aim through the scope in his mind at the back of the knight chasing Lead. The Enemy brandished its sword and pieces of its thick armor slid over each other. The instant Haruyuki saw the less-protective chain mail at the back of the neck…